Sherif is a litigation specialist, with circa 25 years’ experience in the UAE and the wider Middle East, across sectors including general commercial, company dispute, insolvency, construction, real estate, shipping, banking and white-collar crimes.
Sherif is best known for his expertise in the UAE Court system having litigated more than 1,000 court cases in his career. He has extensive experience in advising clients, including corporate and private clients on UAE law, and conducting proceedings before the local courts across the seven Emirates.
Sherif has specialist knowledge in the areas of company disputes, banking, Islamic finance disputes, insolvency and liquidation regimes. He was an ad hoc litigation practitioners’ committee who reviewed the related draft local laws, which puts his clients at a considerable advantage in understanding the laws and their application given them recently coming into force.
Before founding OGH Legal, Sherif Hikal headed up litigation teams at two of the largest local law firms in the UAE, consecutively.
Representative Experience
- Acting for a FCS (an investment bank which has since closed) in relation to an action to secure its share in an oil rig (value of claim circa US$150 million).
- Acting for Kabul Bank in a recovery claims from borrowers (value of claim circa US$600 million).
- Acting for a US construction conglomerate (Fluor) in relation to securing attachments on assets of a UAE project developer of a major infrastructure project in Fujairah (value of claim circa US$15 million).
- Acting for numerous banks (including National Bank of Fujairah, Emirates NBD, Abu Dhabi Islamic bank, Noor Bank, Standard Chartered and others) in relation to obtaining and maintain and subsequently selling, by way of auction, assets owned by borrowers to settle outstanding monies.
- Successfully defending Al Nasser Properties on a claim brought by contractors in relation to a number of the failed projects in the UAE.
- Successfully acting for a leading telecommunication conglomerate (Alcatel) in its attempts to terminate its contracts with its local distributor.
- Acting for Essar Oil & Gas in a dispute arising out of a contract for the supply and installation of heavy machinery in a oil refinery project (value of claim US$10 million).
- Acting for a North African Sovereign fund in a number of related disputes arising out of its investments in the UAE.
- Acting for HSBC (Sherif is one of the banks preferred external litigation counsels) in more than 40 cases including white color crimes, general debt recovery, and as well as acting for funds the bank operated in commercial disputes, trade (commodities), real estate other others (sum of claims in matters value of some claims is over US$250 million).
- Acting for TECOM in a number of similar (but unrelated) disputes arising out of a number of land concession agreements (dispute value of US$100 million).
- Acting for Ittihad Holding (previously known as Naeem Holding) in UAE Court litigation (dispute value of approximately US$60 million).
- Advising Emirates Petroleum in a number of disputes relating to a sale of petroleum products.
- Acting for Galadari Brothers in several (unrelated) UAE Court cases over the years. These primarily related to general commercial transactions.
- Assisting Gargash Enterprises with various aspects relating to its Mercedes Commercial Agency relationship.
- Assisting DUTCO with major shareholding issues and potential disputes arising out of it.
- Acting for Adnan Safarini Architects & Engineering Consultancy in a number of construction claims and related court cases.
- Acting for Delta Emirates Construction LLC for in claims for time and money claims.
- Advising Honeywell in relating to its termination of a major construction contract in the GCC.
- Acting for Aikah Establishment in a number of Court Cases.
- Acting for a number of other local, and international companies including, COSMATIC LLC, Nomura International, Hedley International, Richard Miller, and MAWARID Finance.
